(Screen capture of the intense tornado that scoured Moore, OK, and Oklahoma City yesterday. Screen capture from weather@aol.com)
“Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91”
-NICK OXFORD and MICHAEL SCHWITZ writing in the New York Times
It is Spring, finally, which is good, but of course what comes with the change of season is unsettled air, and that includes Tornedo Alley, the swath of the central plains that gets ripped up with regularity. This string of twisters was nasty: it ripped across parts of Oklahoma City, flattening two schools, throwing cars around and causing real, immediate and personal tragedy to Oklahomans.
Almost a hundred died. It is awful.
Thank God the proliferation of technology that includes Doppler radar, improved communications and the proliferation of shelter preparation helped ameliorate the tragic impact of Mother Nature’s sometime heavy hand.
I wanted to do something to help, and did something I could afford. Donations may be made online at www.unitedwayokc.org or by mail to United Way of Central Oklahoma, P.O. Box 837, Oklahoma City, OK 73101 with notation for “May Tornado Relief.”
I waited for the predictable response from the powers that be, and it was not long in coming. It is not like this is more visceral an event that the slow-motion spinners that pass for cyclones in Washington.
“Extreme weather!” scolded Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the floor of what used to pass as the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. “Wake up!”
Duh.
I have mentioned before that climate and weather are not the same thing. The people who woke up in May 1999, after twisters with rotational wind speeds that hit 300 miles an hour probably felt the same way. Not to mention what happened in 1925.
Senator Whitehouse didn’t mention The Great Tri-State Tornado of Wednesday, March 18, 1925, which was the deadliest and most powerful storm ever to rip through the Heartland. Maybe it was before he woke up. That storm was an F5, as best they can tell, since those classifications did not exist then. It was the most powerful twister ever experienced and it killed 695 citizens. Remember, this was in a time when the population was half of what it is now.
The Tri-State event (Missouri, Illinois and Indiana) doubled the number of casualties of the previous most amazing storm, the Great Natchez Tornado, which killed 300 people in the Spring of 1840. Which is to say, it is always time to wake up in the spring in Tornado Alley.
This morning it is time to do something for the people of Moore, Oklahoma. I am not going to panic about extreme weather, though. I am just thankful I am waking up in 2013, and not 1925 or 1840 in the Heartland.
This is emotional. Let’s remember the people of Oklahoma this morning, and I will set aside the other issues for now.
I was going to tell you about how Mr. and Mrs. Snow, aptly named, won the $318,000 grand prize for naming the date and hour when the ice of the Tanana River finally broke up in Nenana, Alaska. It is the latest time in the Spring the breakup has happened since the railroad men started to keep records 97 years ago.
Someone who didn’t know that things are cyclical, and that weather is not climate, might rush to say that the ice age is coming back. That is nonsense, though it has been said before. I think the global temperature went up about .8 degrees (C) since the Great Natchez Tornado, and things seem to be cooling a bit lately.
Or talk about the depletion of the great aquifer in the Plains that is pressing farmers to desperation this season. But of course, those reports were days ago, and the news cycle has moved on for now.
Not as far away as the Dirty 1930s, when the Dust Bowl forced the Okies into their trucks and on the road to California. The winds blew the soil as far as Washington, DC, they say, and dirtied the town.
These days I am not sure you could tell.
(Senator Sheldon Whitehouse addresses the Senate, warning us it is time to wake up. Screen capture from CSPAN2).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com